


sometimes dreams they don't come true, i was scared of that when i met you

by kitnkabootle



Category: Mum (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Middle Age Love, Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 05:28:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16056485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitnkabootle/pseuds/kitnkabootle
Summary: Michael has always loved Cathy. Snapshots of their life together but apart.





	sometimes dreams they don't come true, i was scared of that when i met you

Michael adjusts his tie and looks at himself in the reflection of the church glass before taking a deep breath and walking through into the church. He ambles between the pews, filled with guests on either side that have all come to celebrate the wedding. He waves to a few mates and stops at the altar where he is joined by his best man and groomsman. His brother stands next to his best mate and they all three wait awkwardly, as you tend to do when you have a sea of loved ones all sat looking at you.

His mind wanders.

He thinks of her of course, as he always does. He wonders what dress she’s wearing, how she’s styled her hair. He wonders if she’s worn makeup; Wonders if she’s happy. Is she looking at him now?

Then the doors open and the organ starts and everyone looks back to catch a glimpse of the bride. She walks down the aisle in a handsome white dress with a long train, flanked by bridesmaids in cotton candy colored dresses. 

He spots her then in the crowd. She’s seated to the side of the aisle and she is looking up at Abi. Her blue eyes are watery and he remembers that she once told him that she always cried at weddings. He stares at her, feels a flush at the back of his neck. She is beautiful, it radiates from her and warms him like a blanket. He watches as she dabs at the corner of her eye and smiles brightly at Abi.

He doesn’t know tears have come to his own eyes until Dave reaches out and pats him on the shoulder, “Aww ya sap. You’re a lucky man, mate. Abi’s a right beauty.”

Michael blinks and takes his eyes away from Cathy, looking up just as his fiancée is joining him at the altar.

He knows that it’s wrong and he’ll never admit to it, but as he says his vows, it’s Cathy’s face that he sees.

———

They almost lost her.

The baby came early by more than a month, when Dave was away on business. The pregnancy had been difficult for Cathy, and he’d been worried as he left, asking Michael to go to the hospital with her if anything should happen.

He got the call in the middle of the night.

“Michael?” Her voice had wobbled on the phone. He knew who it was immediately, despite the interrupted sleep fogging up his brain. He was immediately alert.

“Cathy. Are you okay?”

“I think...” there was a rasping intake of breath, a cry, “I think I’m having the baby.”

“Oh!” He was out of bed quickly, thankful the phone had a long cord as he pulled on his trousers from the day before, “Cath I’m on my way okay?”

“Michael, it’s ... it’s too early.”

He could hear it in her voice, knew that she was crying. It made a lump form in his throat and he had to swallow it in order to answer.

“Cath it will be fine, okay? You’re going to get through this, you both are...” he said gently, despite the thumping in his chest.

"What's wrong?" Abi asks from the bed, voice raspy with sleep when he hangs up the phone. 

"It's Cathy, she's... she's having the baby."

"Oh,' Abi says, pushing her face back in the pillow.

"I'll be back when I can," he says over his shoulder as he pulls the t-shirt over his head and grabs his coat.

Abi's back asleep before he even leaves the house.

-

By the time he’d arrived at Cathy's she was waiting for him on the front step, wrapped in a coat that looked like Dave’s. Her teeth were chattering and over her shoulder she had her hospital bag.

He bundled her into the car, turned the heat up and drove at a clip to the hospital. The nurses took her in for an emergency delivery and when they asked if he was her husband he’d lied and answered yes.

He held her hand until they wheeled her away and waited anxiously for hours in the waiting room. He hadn’t called Dave. He knew he should have but all he could think of was Cathy’s pale face and hollowed, pained expression as they took her away.

When the doctor came to consult him he looked serious and Michael felt his heart hammering in his ribcage.

“The baby has been delivered. You’re a father to a healthy bo—“

“Cathy? How is she?” Michael interrupted, his eyes scanning the doctor’s for some advanced answer.

“Mr. Walker she’s lost a lot of blood. There was an obstruction. Her pelvis couldn’t accommodate the crown and we had to do an emergency Caesarian.”

“Is she okay? Is Cathy okay?” He asked, blinking back the tears in his eyes and feeling that at any moment he might be told that Cathy has gone and his whole world gone with her.

“She’s stable now Mr. Walker, but she will have to be monitored very closely over the next several days.”

“Can I see her?”

“She’s very weak and she’s sleep—“

“I just need to see her,” Michael all but pleaded with the man, “please.”

The doctor reluctantly lead him back to the room where she lay resting, hooked to machines that beeped and blinked and reminded him how precious and precarious life was. He took her slender hand within his and stroked the back of it with his thumb. 

“Cath, I love you.” He had whispered though he knew she wouldn’t hear. He also knew he couldn’t risk not telling her, as if the words themselves would keep her safe.

He did call Dave, eventually, when the nurses made him leave Cathy’s bedside. He hadn’t gone to see the baby, couldn’t bear to look at him — not until they were sure Cathy would pull through.

He explained everything to Dave about what had happened, had assured him that Cathy was stable, that he’d stay as long as he needed to.

“Have you seen him yet? My son?”

“Yes,” Michael lied.

“Does he look like me?” Dave had asked hopefully.

“Yes mate,” Michael had answered, “spittin image.”

Dave’s smile was evident even over the phone.

———

“I can’t do it anymore Michael. I can’t be a stand-in for her,” Abi had said to him through tears over the breakfast table and the divorce papers.

“Abi, we can —“

“We can’t Michael. I mean I know you’ve tried. We’ve tried to make a go of it together for the girls. But I can’t do it anymore.”

Michael looked at the papers, “I know that you... I know what you think... but she’s my best mate’s wife, Abi.”

“You can’t help that,” Abi said, eyes watering as she blinked back the tears, “no more than I can help wanting to be loved by someone as much as you love her.”

Michael wanted to argue that he didn’t love Cathy, that Abi has misread the way he looked at her and the way he spoke of her. But he couldn’t lie, and he wouldn’t. 

The papers were filed within hours.

———

He was there when Dave died. Standing in the room, in the corner, as Jason and Cathy held his hands.

He’d only been in for a visit when Dave’s condition had rapidly deteriorated and he stayed by, watching with sadness as Cathy lost her husband, Jason his father, and he his best friend.

He’d watched Cathy finally pull herself up from the chair, and comfort Jason as he cried upon her shoulder. Watched as Cathy stayed on behind, to kiss Dave’s forehead before walking half-dazed from the room.

He’d given them a lift home. He’d made them tea, knocked softly on Jason’s door and handed him one cup through the crack. Then he’d stepped into Cathy’s room. She was curled up on her side facing the wall and he rounded the bed to set her cup down within reach.

“He’s gone Michael,” she’d said incredulously, throat thick with emotion.

“I know,” he’d answered gently. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to give her comfort. So he stood by in silence for awhile, trying not to stare, trying to give her space.

Finally he’d told her he was going to head home but that she could call at any time if she needed him.

She had nodded her head on the wet pillowcase, whispered a soft “Thank you,” as he left.

He didn’t hear from her until several days later when he got the call about the funeral.

———

He gets the call when he’s in Spain.Cathy’s been taken to hospital.

All he can think about as he makes an immediate journey home is those days after Jason was born, how she’d hung in the balance of life and death. How there’d been good signs and bad. How Dave had reached through the plastic box where Jason lay amid wires, attached to similar blinking machines to Cathy’s. 

He remembers Dave telling Jason all about her.

“Your Mum is the most beautiful, kindest woman in the world. You’re going to get strong and then we’re going to take care of her, is that understood young man?”

He remembers Cathy’s eyes opening at the end of the fourth day, remembers how crystalline blue they were despite the trauma. She’d looked so small in her hospital bed. She was always petite but the machines and cables and equipment that surrounded it, dwarved her.

Dave had been outside of the room at the time and Michael had stepped closer to the bed, looking down at her.

“Cathy,” he’d whispered as he extended a hand to her forehead.

But Dave had come back a fraction later and he retracted it awkwardly, standing back away from the bed, “She’s opened her eyes Dave.”

Dave squeezed in front of Michael and leaned over Cathy, kissing her cheek and wiping the tears that rolled from the corners of her eyes towards the pillow.

“We’ve got a son, Cathy. He’s healthy and getting stronger by the day. Well done, old girl.”

Cathy didn’t speak but her lips twitched in a small smile.

-

He gets to the hospital and runs through the hallways in search of her room. He's got the number written on his hand in smudged ink, but he knows it off by heart now because it's just repeated in his head over and over.

107, 107, 107.

He spots it finally and despite a nurse offering to help him, he pushes through without a word and stops dead when he sees an empty bed.

"Jesus..." he says. He can feel the world tilt and shift beneath him. 

"Oh God," he whispers, rushing up to the bed and looking for a clipboard. There is none, no trace of the former occupant. 

Maybe it's not her bed, it can't be, she can't be gone.

He feels his pulse racing, he loses his balance and has to hold the bar at the end of the bed for support.

He's always held a fragile heart within his chest, has spent his whole life protecting it hoping that some day he'd be able to tell her how he felt.

"Michael?"

He hears her voice behind him and his neck snaps so quickly in her direction he almost falls over.

She is standing in the door way, wheeling an IV beside her. Her hair is messy, and her face drawn but she is smiling at him, "What are you doing in here?"

Michael can't speak at first, can't find a single word as he recovers from the seconds of time in a Cathy-less world.

"Kelly said.... 107," he rasps, knows he's breathless and half-wild but he can't help it.

"I'm in room 108. Kelly must have got the number wrong, it wouldn't surprise--" Cathy's interrupted as Michael surges forward and wraps his arms around her, minding the tube that connects her to the IV drip.

"Michael," she says half in exclamation, half in worry, "are you alright?"

"Yes," he whispers against her hair, holding her tightly to keep from losing her, as though she might disappear from his arms and world if he's to let go.

"What's all this about?" Cathy looks up at him when he loosens his embrace. He knows his cheeks are wet with tears because he can still see the fog of them, clinging to his eyelashes.

"It's just an appendicitis," she says gently, "you're hardly likely to be rid of me that easily."

Michael doesn't have it in him for playful banter. He can't waste a minute's more time with her. 

He hugs her to him again, whispering against her hair, "I love you Cath. I love you. I love you. I love --"

Cathy tilts her head so that his words are whispered against her lips instead.

"I know," she closes her eyes and presses her mouth to his and it's not a chaste kiss. 

The kiss is the years between them. It's the kiss of bad timing, of near-misses, of losses and gains. It's the kiss of friendship, of laughter, of tears and grief. It's shared coffees, shared glances, a whole history of moments that have dotted two full lives.

Down the hall, Jason walks next to Kelly and they both stop with a scuff on the hospital floor when they see the pair locked in their passionate embrace. For once, in maybe both of their lives, they say nothing, just watch Michael holding Cathy within his arms as they kiss.

Kelly looks up at Jason for his reaction and is surprised to see a smile spreading wide at his mouth. She takes his hand within hers and gently guides him back in the other direction.

"I think we're lucky," she whispers to him when they're out of earshot.

Jason looks down towards her curiously, "What d'you mean?"

"We didn't have to wait to have what we have," she says, twirling a piece of her hair within her finger.

Jason looks back over his shoulder at Michael and his mum, still standing in the doorway, locked firmly in their embrace.

"Yeah," he says turning back to her with a smile, "think they're making up for lost time though."

Kelly swats his arm playfully and he leans down to kiss her.

\----  
**X**


End file.
